


Paper Cut

by clairedelalunex



Series: Inevitability [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Anorexia, Depression, Drug Addiction, Hospital, M/M, Sassy Sherlock, Sherlock Needs A Hug, Sick Sherlock, feeding tube, sherlock gets a wake up call
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 15:36:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11877579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairedelalunex/pseuds/clairedelalunex
Summary: Sherlock slowly recovers in the ICU as he battles his demons, and gets a wake up call he didn't think he needed.





	Paper Cut

**Author's Note:**

> This follows through with the story Song to Say Goodbye, so this one-shot won't make any sense at all without that.  
> Also going to add a small trigger warning here for folks suffering from an eating disorder of any form, as there are mentions of weight and talk about Anorexia Nervosa.

**Paper Cut**

_When I'm feeling tired_ __  
She pushed food through the door  
And I crawl towards the crack of light  
Sometimes I can't find my way

            The process of re-feeding and the lingering effects of withdrawal were both daunting and exhausting and they left Sherlock feeling like a shell, an empty husk of rattling bones and tubes. After a rather viscous and inappropriate vocal attack on a young female dietician and a harsh talking down from Mycroft, Sherlock had sighed and conceded to defeat. There was truth in the young woman’s words that he would gain weight much faster with the assistance of the damned nasal gastric tube. He just hadn’t wanted to go through it all again; it rubbed viciously against the back of his throat and the tape that held it against his cheek caused him to itch and develop a nasty red rash.

Now the tube was placed, the wire had been removed and the viscous fluid was slowly being pumped in to his system. There were a plethora of ant-emetics being pumped in to his body to try and combat the vomiting and the ever present nausea, and his veins were burning with the acidic volume of pure potassium, phosphate and the hot flushing of magnesium to try and combat the severity of re-feeding and replenish his depleted electrolytes.

His stomached ached all the time. Sherlock couldn’t tell if it was from the nausea, formula or the constant retching that moved the tube around. But he was bloated and currently doing his best to avoid looking at his distended stomach. Even though the formula was running at a meagre fifteen mils an hour, his body was rebelling and happy to let him know.

Nurses were visiting his bedside every fifteen minutes to measure his dismal observations. His blood pressure was refusing to come up despite the constant stream of fluids running through his central line, the highest reading they could achieve was 75/45, an irregular heart rate of a stroppy 43 still exhibiting a long QT interval placing him at the ever present risk of cardiac arrest again and a mildly hypothermic 34.9 degrees. The only numbers that were in anyway satisfactory was his oxygen levels, 91% on a flow rate of eight litres of oxygen.

Between the constant itch of the tape, the nasal prongs up his nose (one nostril sharing space with a tube) he was on edge and crotchety. Of course he had been taking it out on any of the nurses that came in for his quarterly observations. He’s sent three of them away crying already with his sharp observations. The older woman fussing over him at the moment is the only one willing to come in to his room, Sherlock had given her the usual treatment by listing off all her hidden secrets but she had just scoffed and kept working.

‘How are you feeling, do you need the bed adjusted at all, another heated blanket maybe we need to try and get that temperature of yours back up again.’ She fussed over the three blankets he was currently coddled in, moving on to his pillows and fluffing them up for him a bit more. ‘Any difficulties with the dizzy spells today?’

Every time Sherlock sat up too quickly he was overwhelmed by syncope and would slump back against the pillows, vision filled with grey fuzz. Yesterday he had tried to stand up and move from the bed to the comfy looking armchair across the room, to give his aching protruding back bones a break from the mattress. All he could remember was grabbing the IV pole for balance and then opening his eyes to a crowd of medical personnel swarming over him and shouting out orders and manhandling him back to the bed while simultaneously poking and prodding him, forcing an oxygen mask over his face and replacing the tight blood pressure cuff.

After a brief telling off by the doctor, Sherlock hadn’t attempted to move from the bed again. At least not on his own. The nurses had told him that if he hadn’t already been in the ICU, he would have been in a lot more trouble. She had happily reminded him that his heart was failing and his body wasn’t going to react the same way it always did anymore. He needed patience and rest. Sherlock had just huffed and rolled over stiffly to nurse a bruised cheek bone and hip.

‘I might look in to getting a heated hugger from recovery, might just be the kick your temperature needs.’ The nurse walked out of the room and reappeared a moment later with two more blankets in her arms, she placed them on the visitors chair before pulling the original blankets from his waist and replacing them with the beautifully warm ones she had retrieved. Sherlock was embarrassed by the pleased groan he gave when the warmth enveloped his chilled legs. The nurse smiled knowingly at him, and patted him on the knee before slowly lifting the head of the bed for him. ‘How about a hot drink?’

‘Am I allowed a coffee?’ Sherlock asked, hoping the older nurse who seemed to be enamoured with him would be happy enough to break the rules for him.

‘Sorry kid, coffee is not on the books with that ticker of yours. I was thinking more along the lines of a nice rich hot chocolate. I have these brilliant sachets I bring in and they are just lovely.’ Sherlock looked at her dubiously. ‘I even bring in my own little marshmallows, which technically I shouldn’t allow you but it might be nice to have something to chew a little, couldn’t hurt those low blood sugars either.’

‘If you wouldn’t mind, thank you.’ Sherlock murmured in to his chest, the nurse ruffled his hair which made his cheeks flame red. Normally he would be appalled at the thought of someone touching him that way, even talking to him like he were a child. But the older nurse, he didn’t even know her name; reminded him so much of how his mother had treated him when he was younger and fallen ill. Something that had happened often before he turned thirteen years old.

Filled with the feeling of nostalgia Sherlock jumped a little when the little table was pushed over his heavily layered legs and a steaming cup of cocoa was placed down, marshmallows bobbing in the frothy surface. She hadn’t been lying, it smelt really good. The dietician had him strictly NPO outside of clear fluids and the feeds. His mouth watered at the smell.

Pale shaky hands extended out from beneath the burrow of blankets and closed around the plastic green mug and Sherlock almost shivered in exhilaration at the radiating warmth from the cup. Sending the nurse a small smile he lifted the cup to his lips and sipped on the chocolatey sweetness. He sighed and relaxed back against the cushions in contentment. He liked this nurse.

‘What’s your name?’ Sherlock asked around the froth, keeping his mouth close to the rim to slowly slip at the hot liquid. He didn’t want to waste a bit.

‘Carmody and you might want to get used to seeing me, the other girls refuse to come in here and look after you and I don’t blame them. You have no right to reveal things about people like that, not everyone has the ability to take it.’ She scolded in a motherly tone. ‘Not all of us are as hard and weathered as I am.’

Sherlock looked chastised and took another sip of the drink. ‘Thank you for the drink.’ He mumbled, looking away. It was generally common knowledge that social interaction was not his best area of expertise, he was rude and spouted off his deductions without a second thought. He couldn’t help it, there was no filter between his brain and his mouth and it often got him in to a lot of trouble. At least Carmody wasn’t being too harsh about it.

‘I had a friend when I was in university, going through my doctorate and the stress was getting to her, heavy workloads and we were just starting our hospital rounds and a friend of hers recommend diet pills because they gave you all this energy. She offered them to me too, but I was doing okay keeping my head above the water. But my friend took them, back in the seventies diet pills were practically legalised speed.’ Carmody sat down beside his bed and crossed her long legs. ‘It didn’t take long for her to become addicted; she got to the head of the class but she was falling apart. Not only were the drugs keeping her active but she was losing weight, and a bunch of us tried to intervene at one point, get her to eat but she refused, said there wasn’t time and she didn’t want to get fat again.’ Carmody paused for a moment, looking away with a sad look in her pale blue eyes.

‘She had never been fat to begin with, and now she was just wasting away, emaciated almost. In the end she looked just like you, pale and all bones. She would have kept going to, if she could have. But her body caught up with her, the diet pills weren’t working as well anymore, she’d developed a resistance to them so she started taking more and more. But she didn’t have the body mass to compete with the increased doses. We were in the middle of our intern, doing the rounds at the hospital and she just dropped like a sack of potatoes.’

Sherlock listened over the rim of his cup, sucking on a soggy marshmallow, intrigued.

Carmody shifted on the seat, eyes a little misty. ‘She went in to cardiac arrest for twenty minutes before we got her back, but it was all for nothing. They had her admitted and we learned she was in full organ shut down; there was nothing we could do but keep her comfortable. She weighed no more twenty-eight kilograms when she died; her heart at autopsy was half the size it should have been. Between the pills and the anorexia her body had eaten all the muscle away and in turns was shutting down all her organs.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ Sherlock asked, even though he had a feeling he knew the answer. People didn’t share deep memories from their past for no reason, especially ones this traumatic judging by the haunted look in Carmody’s eyes.

She stared at him for a moment, studying his sharp, pale features. ‘My friend wanted to be better, needed to be better, so it drove her to drugs and anorexia. The drugs made her successful, the anorexia made her perfect. They gave her complete control over her life, even though really; they were both controlling her, which is why she wouldn’t eat and she wouldn’t stop the medication.’

‘Don’t let this control you any longer Sherlock, you may not want to acknowledge your Anorexia Nervosa diagnosis, but it is your reality. You weight twenty-nine kilograms, severely underweight and malnourished. The drugs got to your heart first, but there would have been damage there already either way. You need to eat, you need to speak to someone when you get cravings, and you need to take back your control. If you don’t, then you will never get on that transplant list and your life will be over and all of this will be for nothing.’

They were silent for a while after that, broken only by the small sips to the creamy warm drink that Sherlock was making. Carmody sat up suddenly and placed her hand on his unruly dark curls, ruffling them a little. ‘Let me know if you want another one of those drinks, maybe even another chat okay?’

With that she walked out of the room and Sherlock was alone again, with the unsteady beats of the heart rate monitor, the occasional click and whir of the formula and beeps from the IV consoles and the sting of the potassium. He couldn’t escape what she had just shared with him, not with everything so blaringly wrong surrounding him. He was Carmody’s friend, he was dying but he had a chance to change that while her friend didn’t. He was frustrated with himself, he wanted to rebel against everything and prove he could do it all on his own, his own way. But his own way would be to shut everything and everyone out of his life and inevitably fall back in to the drugs.

But he couldn’t do that this time. He had John, and if Mycroft was telling the truth he had the opportunity to attend college and pursue his chemistry and criminology degree. He had the option of a future if he could keep it together and stay clean and get better. His whole life was terrifyingly at the tips of his fingers and he just had to reach out for it.

Sherlock had never been so scared in his life.          

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if I got the numbers right in terms of weight/kg or temp degree/Fahrenheit what do you Brits go by??  
> Also refeeding sucks ass. and can be very dangerous if not done correctly, and potassium really does feel like pure acid is running through your poor veins. I cry every damn time. If you or someone you know is suffering from an eating disorder or any mental condition please be supportive and seek help and assist in seeking help. <3


End file.
